


Getting Scared

by Devolucao



Category: Bleach
Genre: M/M, Play Fighting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-20
Updated: 2010-10-20
Packaged: 2017-10-12 19:19:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/128197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Devolucao/pseuds/Devolucao
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A very big fight in a very small room: it's all fun and games 'til somebody gets hurt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Getting Scared

"If you're bored," Ichigo says with a scowl. "Go study. Or leave, I don't care."

From the floor, Renji makes an unidentifiable guttural sound and rolls onto his back, arms outspread. He might be dead if not for the slow, leery way his eyes track across the ceiling and down to where Ichigo sits. Beyond that, he lies motionless, socked feet at a perfect forty-five  
degree rest atop his closed chemistry book.

And staring. Staring at Ichigo for what has to be ten unblinking minutes.

So what? He wants to stare, let him stare. Let him stare all damn day if he wants. He came of his own accord: not Ichigo's responsibility to entertain him. Can't see why he doesn't just go and watch some television. He's made it amply clear he has no compunctions about inserting himself between whichever two people happen to occupy the couch at any given time, and waylaying the remote like it's his sole propriety. Oh no. It's not like, at any time he so chooses, Renji can't go off skulking all up and down Karakura-chou without Ichigo or Rukia's supervision.

Not like...not like he can't...

Ichigo flips a page forward then back, realizing he's just reread the same paragraph three times and not a word of it has stuck.

It's getting close to five p.m., almost dinner hour, still hasn't made a dent in his homework, and here's Renji being of absolute little help. So Ichigo throws something at him, just a little balled up paper. Does it in such a manner as not to betray his intent, and aimed just high enough to possibly miss. But not by much.

The thing whizzes past Renji's nose by a hair, and without so much as a blink. So Ichigo winds up and throws a larger one. When that fails to provoke a reaction, he cranks his arm back and flat out catapults the floor-cushion at Renji's head.

It nails him square in the face with a satisfying whap, and remains there for one long, terrible second before Renji lifts a hand–-one elaborately careful hand–-to remove it. After all that, the best he can manage is a look of confused betrayal. "Why would you do that?"

Ichigo folds his arms over his chest. "Just because."

Renji drops the cushion and half-heartedly bats it in more or less Ichigo's direction. "I thought we were studying," he sniffs, not even feigning interest. He lets his arms flop back to the floor, and it's like he couldn't care less if the edge of a tattoo or several should happen to peek out here and there. "I thought maybe Rukia--"  
    
"This is pathetic, you're pathetic," says Ichigo. "Can't you find something better to do? You come here, you eat our food, use up our toilet paper, bother me while I'm tryin' to study--"

Renji shrugs a shoulder up from the floor, and reaches around to fish something from under his back: his school notebook, which he thrusts casually at Ichigo. "Copy my notes," he says. "Go on."

His script is neat, slanting, and very small. There's at least a weeks worth of chemistry crammed into that one page, with covalents and little diagrams color-coded in cheerful gel-pen.

He's so rubbing Ichigo's nose in it.

"I assure you," says Renji, voice extra cool and formal, "it's all correct."

Ichigo sighs and dutifully shrugs himself up from the floor, picks a foot carefully over Renji, and reaches down to accept the notebook. He stands there paging through, ankles bracketing Renji's waist; logic being that it's his floor, and he's every right to stand in whichever spot he wants, whether or not Renji just happens to occupy said spot. The late-day sun casts a long shadow behind Ichigo, and this is where Renji looks, up and up, mouth slightly down at the corners.

"Yeah, yeah," Ichigo mutters, "these are great 'n all–"

"Then what's the problem? I'm doin' you a favor, Kurosaki," he grumbles, all wounded pride and bright eyes. "I mean, don't go falling all over yourself or nothin'."

"No, no, this is great," Ichigo says, hastily, paging through quicker. The work is to-a-"T" perfect. No way Renji could've done all this in the little time he's been here. "You must've read through the entire text book...jeez."

"Like hell I did," says Renji, grinning. His teeth are big, bright white like his eyes. "The crap that passes for education these days, I hadda bring over my own materials."

At this, Ichigo lowers the notebook and lets off a snort. "Look who's got something to prove all the sudden," he says, lifting a foot and poking at Renji's stomach. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were trying to make me look bad." He poke's Renji's stomach again, eliciting a soft  
grunt.

He's not sure why he's surprised to feel...warmth there through his sock, to feel a give. Not for a moment has he forgotten that this is a fake body, that the being inside is nothing more than spirit and ectoplasm, and that he, Renji, has not been alive in the conventional sense for a very long time.

Still, Renji scowls and reddens like anything living would. "Is that what you think people think?"

"What, huh?"

"Is that the sort of reputation you think I have?" Renji growls, low and warning. "I'm warning you, poke me again, but don't you dare patronize me."

"What, no! I'd never! Ass. But I can't copy these." Ichigo bends and sets the notebook on Renji's chest, then stands half-way, bent over and looking at him. "Thanks anyway, but I gotta show my own work, or it won't count."

He doesn't need to explain why this school thing is still so important to him, to Sado, and to Orihime. He's sure Renji understands the need for some small measure of normalcy in their lives.

"Suit yourself," Renji sighs. He shrugs half-upright again and tucks the notebook neatly beneath his untouched biology text. He's glancing sneakily at the clock as he does this.

"You're not even gonna ask," says Ichigo, again poking him in the stomach with one socked foot.

Renji flops obligingly backwards, arms outspread, body now ever so slightly curved. "Ask what?"

"If you can stay for dinner. You're just gonna wait until someone invites you," says Ichigo, frowning over Renji's impossibly warm and giveable belly. "You don't think that's kind of rude?"

"Nope."

His hand is also warm when it closes gently around Ichigo's ankle; warm and impossibly large. Ichigo wiggles his toes, and Renji curls around them, stomach shivering; but he hasn't said to stop. So Ichigo pokes him in the ribs, right along his spine, watches him shivercurl in the other   
direction.

He laughs uneasily and tries to roll onto his back, as he'd been before being so rudely interrupted, and Ichigo plants a foot in his stomach. Not hard or anything, but pressing, testing the give. Poke me again, he says.

Well, alright.

Ichigo pokes him in the chest, gets on him about being rude again, because he's not fighting back; he hasn't yet roared and tried to snap off Ichigo's head. He's just lying there looking at turns sheepish and...and weird.

"You like this, don't you," says Ichigo, in a voice that can't be his. "You're some kinda big weirdo that likes this, huh?"

He can see he's pushing it now, seriously toeing the line. Renji's face has gone from sheepish to blazing; unreadable, but all the more dangerous for that. A grin is not always a smile, but sometimes it's just bared teeth, a primitive apelike reflex–or so says Ichigo's sociology book. Come to think of it, Renji is sort of apelike, in the way that Sado is sort of tree-like.

Ichigo slides the foot down, Renji's skin shiver shivering, and prods him again, finds the sharp hump of a hipbone which fits neatly into the arch of his foot. He rubs, feels fabric over skin, skin over tissue, tissue over bone, shifting perfectly in every way; never too little and never too much. Fake but real enough to avoid detection, right to the very core. He's got a navel, fingernails, eyelashes, and absolutely something between his legs.

Ichigo's ready for the kick, Renji's hips twisting up off the floor, legs wind-milling, aiming for a quick takedown. He steps into it, and he's thinking the words parabola and trajectory, and if he gets in close, he can disrupt the arc: grab onto Renji's calf and use his own leverage to send him over backwards.

Ichigo's ready for the answering grab. Renji's flexible with a long reach, easily folds over and back in on himself, again using those long legs to vault upright and launch himself. But he's slower than Ichigo, and not used to the weight of his own earthly flesh. Ichigo's shoulder-throw  
sends him caroming into the bed and off of it. The mattress takes most of his impact, but a little of the frame catches him somewhere, a loud ugly crack, and Renji's rolling on the floor: silently furious and clutching his knee.

Ichigo pulls for air, tries to catch his breath as he drops down beside Renji. "Hey, you okay? Did you hit the--"

And Renji's hand is over his mouth. The pain isn't a ploy, but he's used it to his advantage. Alright, thinks Ichigo, if that's the way he wants it. A hand-blade to the elbow, five points of pain to Renji's radial nerve, and Ichigo's other hand over his mouth to keep him from howling. His eyes are huge now, every new insult a momentous surprise, as if no-one had ever told him his corporeal body could feel pain.

"That hurts?" says Ichigo, hand over-top the elbow, just holding Renji's arm immobile for him.

An eager nod, and much of Renji's stiffly, carefully spiked hair has begun to pull from its knot.

"Lemme know when you can feel your fingers again," says Ichigo, and his hand's away from Renji's shocked mouth–-widely grinning, or grimacing–--diving for his unprotected ribs and armpit.

He's betting no-one's ever told Renji his corporeal body could be ticklish, either. The impulse is brash, immature, and rightfully results in a knee to the chin. For that, Ichigo pins Renji and cranks an arm behind his back, threatens the sanctity of his ass with one knee.

Dirty tactics. His dad would bust a vein if he could see, and his dojo master would surely crack him across the shoulders with a practice sword. So he's not sure why he does it. It's like some beast has uncurled inside his chest, and suddenly snaked its limbs out into his arms and legs,  
taking him over. It's the beast that grows horns on young boys who try too hard. It makes him want to do things sometimes, and being the son of a doctor, he knows to a scientific exactitude what those things are.

He knows, unlike his classmates, that you can't get a girl pregnant by looking at her funny. He knows, much to his floor-gazing embarrassment, what a condom is and how to use one–in theory, if not in practice. He knows all about the special time in his life, and has spent many a  
night in the bathroom learning more.

He knows a lot, a whole lot about that stuff. And he knows why Renji's chest and neck look like they've been scalded, why he's doing everything he can to protect his groin. He's going to use that fact to embarrass Renji, before Renji can use it to embarrass _him_.

"Oof...hey...you know it's natural to get excited...at your age..." Ichigo laughs. "Reeenjiiii..."

Renji's growling something about "playing with me," and trying to buck Ichigo off, shaking his shoulders, rolling and twisting. Trying his damned most desperate, still gasping that panicked confusing gasp; teeth bared, laughing and angry all at the same time. "This is too cruel, you  
bastard. I'monna kill ya...just you gimme a chance...kill you dead!"

Ichigo believes him; believes that he'll try, at least, if given enough slack and opportunity. So, across the floor they roll, bumping and scraping and bruising, and onto his feet Renji drags Ichigo, still slung onto his back, dancing and winding up to toss him away. Both of them laughing and angry and all at the same time confused, and it isn't until they hit the edge of the desk and knock over the lamp--which does not shatter, but clatters loud enough to alert the entire household--

\--not until then, that they stop.

Renji does not feel so soft anymore. He feels hard, and big, and dangerous. His arms are out and braced backwards against the edge of the desk, where he has Ichigo near crushed. The tension's enough that he could snap--just like over tempered steel, thinks Ichigo, just like when  
you're forging a sword. And this is nothing like the other two times they'd fought. It's way more serious than that.

Renji's wheezing, and his back's rising and falling like holy hell, clammy through his thin shirt, damp against Ichigo's chest. And in the stupidest move to end all stupid moves, Ichigo whispers: "relax..."

"Relax," he's panting, and his whole face is on Renji's shoulder, that thickly muscled part joining his neck to his very deadly arm. "It's okay, it's cool."

Renji does relax, sagging slightly at first, then more of his weight's falling back to rest on Ichigo, pressing him harder into the edge of the desk, forcing him to sit there. His breath comes shaky, but only for a minute. Then he's calm, quiet, still.

"Hey, Renji--"

"Stupid kid," says Renji, an uncertain edge to his voice. "Like you'd even know where to put it." Then he laughs and laughs.

But for a few days afterwards, he's very careful to avoid Ichigo without making it seem obvious to anyone but Rukia.

"Ah, men are idiots," she dismisses with a wave, which seals the matter once and for all.

___________


End file.
